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NATIONAL NEWS FOR WEEK COMMENCING JUNE 03 2018.
IN OUR 23rd YEAR OF NON STOP NEWS

WIA Bord Comment - Marcus, vk5wtf

THESE STORIES AND MORE IN THIS EDITION OF NEWS FROM THE WIRELESS INSTITUTE
OF AUSTRALIA 2018 AND FOR WEEK OF JUNE 3

Canberra begins rural telecoms review

A committee has been established for the next review of telecommunications
services in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia.

The Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee is convened
every three years to examine regional telecommunication services.

Six members have been appointed to the committee, which brings a wealth of
experience in the telecommunications sector and an extensive understanding
of regional Australia.

"This is a fantastic opportunity for those in the regions to have their say
on how they use telecommunication services and the issues that affect them,"
said Minister for Regional Communications Senator Bridget McKenzie.

"The review will examine regional telecommunications issues closely and
examine how rural Australians can maximise the economic and social benefits
that next-generation telecommunication services can provide."

The review will commence shortly and all rural Australians are encouraged
to participate.

The committee will shortly call for submissions and will undertake public
consultations in regional and rural areas later in the year. It is expected
to report to government by the end of September 2018.

If you'd like to talk about Amateur Radio, if you've just got your license,
if you're shy, or you just want a chat, drop in and say "Hi".

The net is run as a spoke and hub, which means you only need to remember
two callsigns, yours and that of net control, who, as their name suggests,
control or keep the conversation flowing by asking for check ins and
comments.

"How to Participate" along with Stats (including the log) can be accessed
in the "Stats" link from the F-Troop Web Page:
http://ftroop.vk6.net/

Please contact help@vk6.net with any questions.

(Glynn VK6PAW)

All Hand On Deck...

This weekend you don't need to 'go down to the sea in ships' to participate
in a fun 'world wide event.'

It's MUSEUM SHIPS WEEKEND.

Ham stations will work from a wide variety of museum ships that include
submarines, aircraft carriers, battleships, there is a Civil War Ironclad
Gunboat and a concrete hulled merchant ship from WW1 to name but a few
in this 'on air flotilla.'

The Rockhampton and District Amateur Radio are operating call sign VK 4 GLA
from HMAS Gladstone during the International Museum Ships Weekend 2-3 June

Ray VK4FRAL a member of the RaDAR club will be operating the club station
from the museum ship and wants all radio operators to participate in the
international event.

HMAS Gladstone is the only registered ship in Australia taking part.

There is a great article about the event in the Gladstone Observer
that can be found at the link below.

What a crazy few months I have had. I was looking at my log book the other
day and I could see how busy I have been with the lack of contacts. The
biggest thing I have done this year is spend a few weeks working on WSPR,
testing skip distance with 150 mW.

But... I'm also starting to hit a slump, some of you out there will have
been through it before, and some of you listening might be going through it
now. Last time I was off air for 8 years.

What can I do this time, well, going to events like the WIA Convention two
weeks ago, and having a chance to see how others enjoy the hobby. Oh, and a
big thanks to Rex, VK7MO, I was like a kid being allowed to play with a
really expensive toy when I worked USA via 10 GHz EME.

It got me thinking, what can I do that's different and exciting? What can we
all do to help others? Do you have a great story about what kept you going
and keen, or have you helped someone else keep their interest alive?

If you think it's big enough, send it to AR Magazine for publishing, if not,
share on social media, or send them to me, vk5wtf@wia.org.au

In issue 77 of the free IARU Region 1 VHF newsletter, the Chair of
VHF-UHF-uW committee Jacques ON4AVJ highlights the threats to vital
amateur radio spectrum

"In less than a year we will have our interim meeting about the use of
the spectrum above 30 MHz We have to face some challenges. I want to
invite all Member Societies to think about how to promote, defend and use
our frequencies," he said.

"They are wanted by others, both government and commercial, users.

So this is a wake-up call to be aware that if we not are using those bands
we will lose them.

Like some have said: 'use them or lose them' and "HF is not the only bands
for ham radio, but they are the easiest to use".

Download the May 2018 newsletter from
http://www.iaru-r1.org/index.php/vhfuhsshf/newsletters

South Africa gets 100 kHz at 5 MHz (60m)

On Friday, May 25, ICASA published the National Radio Frequency Plan 2018
in which amateur radio was allocated 100 kHz on a shared basis in the
60 metre band as well as channel 5290 kHz for the 5 MHz propagation
research project

The South African Radio League reports:

The National Radio Frequency Plan is a nearly 300-page document which
covers the entire radio frequency spectrum. The plan is in Government
Gazette 41650 which will from next week be available from the Government
Printer's website under general notice 266. The SARL will carefully
consider all the amateur allocations and ensure that a band plan is in
place.

The spectrum 5350 to 5450 kHz is now available to all licensed radio
amateurs on a shared non-interference basis, the SARL Council is working
on the 60 m band plan. Council will publish the band plan as soon as
possible and then operation on 60 metres can start.

In addition, the channel 5290 kHz has been allocated for WSPR beacons
deployed in the SARL Propagation Research project and members can continue
to use this frequency.

EmComm antenna supports mounted at Wahkiakum HS

The County Sheriff's Department of Emergency Services teamed up with the
Wahkiakum School District, Wahkiakum County PUD and the Wahkiakum Amateur
Radio Club to get one step closer to being able to deal effectively with
"the big one."

The step was to hang pulleys and ropes at the baseball field so that
emergency antennas can very quickly be hoisted and used to facilitate
communications from that county out to anywhere else in the world when
the Volcano 'blows it's top.'

The next step will be to test the system from 11:00 a.m., Saturday June 23
to 11:00 a.m., Sunday June 24 during Amateur Radio Field Day.

Many communications modes will be tested using five antennas and stations,
including Morse Code, FM simplex voice, single sideband, PSK31, FT8, MFSK16.

Full story
http://www.waheagle.com/story/2018/05/24/news/emcomm-antenna-supports-mounted-at-wahkiakum-hs/14623.html

(sourced to SouthGate)

HAM RADIO OPERATIONAL NEWS - IT'S A CONTACT SPORT

All major Australian contests, rules and results, are on the
Contest Section of the WIA website.

Thomas, F 4 HPX, will once again be active as FR/F4HPX from various locations
on Reunion Island (AF-016) until June 15th.

Activity will be on 40-15 meters using CW, SSB, RTTY, PSK31, JT65, JT9 and
possibly FT8.

QSL via the Bureau.

Be listening for Walter HB9XBG operating as FO/HB9XBG from Bora Bora
Island in French Polynesia between June 7-17th. Activity will be on 20
meters SSB. QSL via his home call sign.

II 1 ITR will be celebrating the 90th anniversary of the so-called Red Tent,
an Italian airship that set out to explore the North Pole.

Continuing to the 25th of June, the plan is to work on all bands and all
modes.

QSL and other information is available at QRZ.com for IT 1 ITR

(rsgb)

Pacific Tour

Dave, WJ2O, has announced his plans to activate a few islands in the Pacific
before and after he joins the KH1/NH7Z Baker Island DXpedition.

His tentative schedule (all dates are approx.) is as follows:

American Samoa (KH8) -- Around June 8th; for 2 days
Samoa (5W) -- Around June 11th; for 2 days
American Samoa (KH8) -- Around June 13th; for 4 days; signing KH8/WJ2O
Baker Island (KH1) -- Around June 27th; for 10 days
Fiji (3D2) -- Around July 13th for 4 days

Dave reports from the Visalia DX Convention:
I don't have a license for Samoa or Fiji yet.
I know on American Samoa I will sign simply KH8/WJ2O.
With the group on Baker we are KH1/KH7Z.

(sourced to SouthGate)

VI 50 IARU 3

IARU Region 3 has 39-member countries and to help celebrate the formation
50 years ago, the WIA has been able to secure a special call sign VI50IARU3
which will be on air until 31st August.

The 'Martello Tower' group will once again be running a special event station
GB 5 RC from the Radio Caroline ship the MV Ross Revenge over a long weekend
3rd to 5th August.

They also have arranged trips out to visit the ship for a tour including
studios, transmitter room etc.

(Sourced to SouthGate)

GB1NHS permanent special event call sign

"Essex Ham" reports the official launch of GB 1 NHS.

This unique permanent special event call sign is being looked after on behalf
of the National Health Service by Paul Devlin G1SMP

Paul has plans to put the call sign to good use promoting both amateur radio
within the NHS, and NHS initiatives using amateur radio.

(Sourced to SouthGate)

WIRELESS WEATHER

Lunar eclipses and climate change

Strange but true:

You can learn a lot about climate change by watching lunar eclipses. At
the 46th Global Monitoring Annual Conference in Boulder, Colorado,
a climate scientist announced new results from decades of monitoring.

They suggest that Earth's clear stratosphere is contributing about as much
to recent warming as the global increase of greenhouse gases.

Visit Spaceweather.com for the full story.

(SouthGate)

WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS --- DIGITAL

Many amateurs are experimenting with various digital voice modes, such as
Yaesu System Fusion C4FM, D-STAR and DMR etc.

Well there is also a digital voice mode for HF radio operations too, FreeDV.

While text based HF digital modes are common, FreeDV is the first new VOICE
mode for HF since SSB was introduced in the 1950s and 60s.

David, VK5DGR, has just released the latest FreeDV 700D mode. This uses a
700 bit/s speech voice codec, powerful forward error correction, and a new
modem to send digital speech over HF radios.

Testing of FreeDV 700D has demonstrated that it is outperforming SSB on
poor channels.

Here is a demo of SSB, followed by FreeDV 700D, on a poor quality 3,200 km
path between Adelaide and the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand.

http://rowetel.com/700d_ssb.wav

You can run FreeDV using any PC set up for digital modes, using the
FreeDV 1.3 GUI program, which you can download from freedv dot org

http://freedv.org.

Australian FreeDV activity is on 7.177 and 14.236 MHz
You can coordinate FreeDV QSOs using the FreeDV QSO finder on qso.freedv.org

http://qso.freedv.org

So why not try FreeDV, and join us in experimenting with this exciting and
powerful new mode on the HF bands!

More information may be found on the AREG and WIA webpages in the text
edition of this broadcast

www.areg.org.au

73 from Ben, VK5BB, for the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group.

HAMNET amateur radio network is growing

DARC report the number of nodes and link routes for the HAMNET amateur
radio network is rising

Hamnet is a high-speed digital radio network that interconnects automated
ham radio stations and its services, such as Packet Radio,
Allstarlink/EchoLink/ IRLP, APRS, Paging and Amateur Television
using radio links on the higher bands like 13 cm, 6 cm and 3 cm.

A Google English translation of the DARC post reads:
"There were 719 links in 2017 and in 2018 821 were counted."

There is also an increase of the Hamnet entrances reported on 13 cm,
6 cm and 9 cm.

ESA astronaut Alexander KF5ONO and the other pair will blast off from
Kazakhstan and will arrive at the International Space Station two days
later.

This will be Alexander's second spaceflight. He is also the second ESA
astronaut to take over command of the International Space Station.

(SouthGate)

WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS --- IOTA

Irish Islands IOTA Tour 2018

Beginning June 1st 2018, the EIDX Group are activating all Irish IOTA
Groups.

Using the 'Echo Juliet' prefix, EJ0DXG will be QRV from IOTA EU-006,
EU-007, EU-103 and EU-121 this northern summer.

Supported by dxwanted.net a beautiful plaque will be available for whoever
works them on 4 different IOTA Groups.

So, as a 'Bonus' or 'Wildcard' station, EI 0 DXG will also be QRV from
Mainland Ireland (EU-115) throughout and until September 30th 2018.

Some of these islands are also in rare Grid squares and for Worked All
Ireland followers...will also count towards the Island award.

Starting off with 'Little Saltee Island' EU-103 on June 15/16/17/18th....
the group will be QRV on HF and 6m bands using CW, SSB and Digital modes.

July will see activity from the Great Blasket Island EU-007.

August will see EU-121 grace the bands from Bere Island.

Their last Island activity ends September 16th as part of their DX
weekend from Inishmore, Aran Islands EU-006.

(Irish Radio Transmitters Society)

WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP --- MARITIME

This weekend members of the Rockhampton and Gladstone Amateur Radio Clubs
are manning the radio room of museum ship HMAS GLADSTONE in the port of
Gladstone Queensland.

They are participating in the International Museum Ships Weekend.

Over 100 ships from around the world are registered for the event.

A new club callsign for the HMAS GLADSTONE, VK 4 GLA has just been received
and will be operating across the bands. Have a listen, the crew of
operators at VK4GLA are standing by for your contact, so give them a call.

Also give II 4 AMP a call.

In conjunction with this weekends 'Museum Ships Weekend Event'
members of A.R.I., The Italian Amateur Radio Association, will
activate the callsign II 4 AMP.

The station is close to the relic keel of Guglielmo Marconi's yacht
'Elettra', which is kept at the Museum, and will ideally give new life
to its 'voice', allowing the radio amateurs over all the world to get
in contact with it during this weekend of June 2-3rd.

QSL Manager is IQ 4 FE (by the Bureau or direct).

Details of this international Amateur radio event are at
http://www.nj2bb.org/museum/

Hallo everyone this is Clive VK6CSW reminding you that the Radio Amateurs
Old Timers Club of Australia's June bulletin goes to air tomorrow.

This month as well as all the latest Club news, Ian VK3JS will be presenting
two articles, one on Gertrude Elion, a woman who contributed much to
science, and the other on Radioactivity.

Everyone, RAOTC members and non-members alike, is most welcome to tune in
and to join in the call backs afterwards.

The broadcast originates in Melbourne at 10 am local time on the VK3REC
2m repeater with simultaneous relays on 1825 kHz and 7146 kHz.

At 0100 UTC for eastern states listeners, Hans VK5YX will transmit the
program on 20 metres on 14.150 MHz

At 0200 UTC, for West Australian listeners the program is transmitted
simultaneously on 7088 kHz and via the linked repeater network.

At night the broadcast is repeated at 2030 hours Melbourne time on
80 metres on 3650kHz, in Tasmania at 1930 on the VK7RAA and 7RTC
networks plus a TV presentation by Tony VK7AX at 2030 hours Tasmanian time.

From Tuesday you can download the audio file from the Club website at
www.raotc.org.au where you also find full details about our Club.

The Xenia Gazette reports young people were taught how to solder and built
their own technology kits at Hamvention

The amateur radio convention's Youth Tech area, sponsored by Dayton Amateur
Radio Association, provided a space for youth ages 9-18 to build their own
technology kits.

"The idea here is to teach kids skills such as soldering, which has been
pretty much lost by recent generations kids don't grow up knowing how
to do that anymore," Jeff KD 8 SHF, Chair of the Youth Tech Committee, said.

"So it teaches them skills on how to solder and at the same time they get
to build some kits that teach different principles."

He pointed out a boy working on a wireless Tesla speaker.
"Essentially when he's done with it, he can plug it into any audio source
such as his phone," he said. "It's a perishable skill that kids are losing
today because they don't grow up doing this," he continued. "This is a way
to re-instill those skills, because they're still very useful skills."

Read the full story at
http://www.xeniagazette.com/news/30388/ham-kids-build-learn-tech-skills

A reminder when supplying HamFest info we obviously can't plug commercial
traders "on air", but we at the WIA will put your supporters in this text
edition "no worries."

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